GREENBURGH, N.Y.—Ryan McDonagh did not practice Monday as the New York Rangers returned to the ice for the first time since Saturday night's game in Montreal, where the 23-year-old defenseman was hurt on a leaping hit by Canadiens winger Max Pacioretty, who slammed McDonagh into the glass, face-first.

The hit was the first thing John Tortorella talked about after his team's 3-0 loss Saturday, asking the assembled media at Centre Bell how high off the ice Pacioretty was when he delivered the hit. Sunday, the NHL decided not to discipline Pacioretty for the play. Tortorella's reaction to that was only to say Monday that it was not his call. While the coach was in no mood to be fined for criticizing a league that has dipped into his pocket before, there was plenty of reaction to both the hit and the aftermath.

Canadiens forward Max Pacioretty received no fine or suspension from the NHL for his hit on Rangers defenseman Ryan McDonagh. (AP Photo)

On Twitter, Larry Brooks of the New York Post wrote, "League consistently appears more invested in protecting perps rather than victims. Kind of pathetic. But so was NYR lack of response on Sat."

What kind of response should the Rangers have given? On a "Rangers Roundtable" on Yahoo's Puck Daddy, Kevin DeLury wrote, "Ryan McDonagh is plastered face first into the boards by Max Pacioretty, while Marty Biron is bowled over twice without even a nasty look coming from a teammate. Last year, Pacioretty would have been pummeled quicker than Glen Sather hanging up the phone on Bob Gainey after getting him to agree on the Scott Gomez trade."

Ah, yes, that kind of "response." An eye for an eye, a face for a face, a brain for a brain. That, Tortorella was willing to address.

"What are you asking, did they go out and go beat him up or something?" Tortorella said. "Is that what you want to happen? Our team was fine. Our team was fine. You have to remember, we are trying to win a hockey game. I read a couple of comments about how you guys get carried away with that stuff. I have full faith in the toughness of our team and how we're going to handle those type of situations."

At the time of Pacioretty's hit, the Rangers were down 1-0. Their best revenge would have been to tie the game on the power play that resulted from the boarding penalty against Montreal. Put the puck in the net instead of putting someone in the hospital. The Rangers did not do the former, so there was widespread thinking—especially after two more Canadiens goals—that someone should have done the latter.

That kind of thinking, however, did not filter to New York's locker room.

"We just kept playing," Rangers captain Ryan Callahan told Sporting News. "You can't take a penalty when we're down 1-0 at the time. You'll find your places for that, but I don't think at that time, it was there."

Said New York defenseman Marc Staal: "Our focus went on ... trying to reverse the ship and get back into the game. Obviously, you don't forget about things like that, and we'll play them again. ... I think every game or every hit, the situation is different in what happens afterward."

More and more, the situation dictates that justice be meted out by the NHL office, rather than on the ice. In today's NHL, surrendering two minutes or more of power play time to an opponent is not often a worthwhile price to pay just to settle a score for a dirty hit.

Last Tuesday, the Chicago Blackhawks had a 3-1 lead when Vancouver's Jannik Hansen clobbered Marian Hossa with a hit that earned a one-game suspension. The Blackhawks could have sought a pound of flesh, but had they given the Canucks a free power play, the two goals Vancouver scored late in the third period may have turned out to be enough to win the game, rather than send it to overtime. Chicago eventually won, 4-3, in a shootout.

"If you're a believer in frontier justice, you'd probably like to have seen something happen," said former Rangers defenseman Dave Maloney, who now does color commentary on the team's radio broadcasts. "But … there's no question that, I think, eventually that's all going to fall by the wayside. There are still teams like Toronto and Boston—there are still teams that bully their way through the league. You go back to two years ago, and to a large degree, when (Brad) Marchand was allowed to do what he did to (Daniel) Sedin, Vancouver was cooked (in the Stanley Cup Finals). But my feeling there is Sedin should have stood up for himself and then let it all fall into place after that."

Sedin, who did nothing but take Marchand's punches to the face in Game 6, got a 10-minute misconduct penalty for his troubles. So did Marchand, plus an extra two minutes for roughing. The Canucks did nothing with their power play, though at 5-2 with 91 seconds to go in the game, it hardly mattered.

Marchand, who said after that game that he kept punching Sedin "because I felt like it" faced no further punishment from the NHL. He should have. So should Pacioretty. One reason hockey is becoming safer is because each dirty play is no longer met with an equal or greater piece of retaliation. The players know they cannot afford to hurt their teams further than they already have been hurt by the initial incidents.

If the response is not coming from the ice, it has to come from the league, and that means the league has to get even tougher if it wants to take unnecessary danger out of a game that has plenty of inherent risk and physicality when it is played the right way.